With Raaz 3, the Bhatt camp continues to explore the viewer's fascination with the afterlife and the occult, liberally borrowing plot elements from a host of Hollywood movies that have acquired a cult following. These would at least include "The Exorcist" (priest exorcism), "House of Wax" (abandoned studio), "Resident Evil" (close-ups of freaky monster), "Nightmare on Elm Street" (the girl can't sleep), "Drive-thru" and "We all scream for ice-cream" (for the scary clown).
Apparently, the Bhatt camp took the misquoted sentence "Copying from one source is plagiarism, copying from multiple sources is Research" in a plain wrong way. In the words of Emraan Hashmi from this very movie, do they think the audience is dumb enough not to care about this kind of "chutia-paa"? Come on, Mr. Bhatt, give us something original, just sprinkling some Indian flavour where Ganeshji loans a trident to the hero so he can fight Evil in the end doesn't quite absolve you of plagiarism.
The worst part is the didactic manner in which the Bhatts explain stuff about the afterlife; almost, as if Class 6 students are being introduced to a History subject. "This is called Black Magic", "This potion of water is laced with black magic", "Now you go to the world of souls where you fight the baddies", "If God doesn't answer your prayer, come to the Devil. He might help you." Every time one of these dialogues flashed on screen, I couldn't help but yawn.
The only redeeming feature about this movie is Bipasha Basu. I think she showed some strong conviction in her acting - Esha and Emraan looked jaded and Esha's histrionics were a bit over-the-top. Manish Chaudhary, I generally consider him a good actor but this time, he somewhat failed to convince in the role of Satan.
